Smart accounts in DeFi, gaming, DAOs, and onboarding

In DeFi, smart accounts allow users to batch multiple actions—such as approval, deposit, leverage, and withdrawal—into one atomic transaction. This removes intermediate approvals that typically expose users to phishing and increases UX efficiency in protocols with complex flows, such as options vaults or leveraged yield farming. Safe, one of the earliest contract-wallet platforms, powers thousands of DAO and treasury accounts that now benefit from modular ERC-4337 features. Developers can attach plugins to automate disbursements, define multi-tiered approval logic, or enable social recovery without redeploying the base contract.

In gaming, the value proposition lies in session-based interactivity and seamless asset usage. A player can be issued a smart account at the moment of onboarding, linked to an email, device, or OAuth provider, and begin interacting with in-game NFTs or fungible tokens without touching MetaMask or knowing what gas fees are. The game sponsor sets up a paymaster to cover gas, while the smart account handles session key delegation so that in-game actions can execute without user interruptions. Projects like Immutable and Ronin have explored this pattern to minimize UX friction and bring games to mobile-native environments.

Smart accounts also simplify DAO participation. Voter wallets can enforce limits per proposal, prevent over-delegation, or grant temporary voting rights based on off-chain metrics. This enables structured governance without reliance on third-party scripts or non-native snapshot integrations. Additionally, onboarding flows improve through gas sponsorship and embedded wallet creation, where an app can provision a new wallet upon login, fund it, and initiate user engagement without manual funding. ZeroDev and thirdweb have popularized these flows by abstracting bundler and paymaster interaction into a few lines of front-end code.

Composability with dApps: Session-based access and approvals

Composability is one of the most powerful outcomes of account abstraction. dApps can now interact with smart accounts in ways that respect contextual permissioning. For instance, a lending platform can request a session key to allow automatic liquidation protection, operating only under certain interest-rate thresholds. A staking dApp can be whitelisted as a trusted contract, bypassing the need for the user to approve tokens each time. These patterns reduce repetitive signing, eliminate redundant risk exposure, and allow apps to structure workflows that behave more like traditional software—pre-approved, smooth, and resilient to accidental misuse.

Session-based access also allows delegation without giving up custody. A marketplace could receive short-term permission to list and update prices, while a wallet app may access spending limits and override keys only during certain hours or conditions. This enables programmable security profiles that mimic enterprise-grade permissions within a self-custody framework, opening up use cases for teams, families, or organizations with complex access needs.

Gas sponsors (Paymasters) and onboarding flows

Paymasters are key enablers of frictionless onboarding. By covering gas on behalf of the user, they make it possible for new participants to engage with blockchain applications without owning ETH or learning about gas mechanics. These contracts are typically configured with logic that determines when and for whom gas fees are paid. Some paymasters reimburse only whitelisted operations; others implement rate limits or deny sponsorship for blacklisted targets.

During onboarding, a dApp can bundle the creation of a smart account, a token claim, and a dApp interaction—all under a single user operation. Thirdweb and Biconomy allow this pattern through hosted bundler-paymaster pipelines. This approach is now widely adopted in Web3 social platforms, NFT minting apps, and mobile-native games where UX parity with Web2 is essential. In this model, gas costs are either subsidized by the app or built into the economic incentives that follow—for example, recovering the fee through in-game transactions or social referrals.

Limitations: cost, security, tooling maturity, standard adoption

Despite the benefits, smart accounts introduce new complexity and overhead. Gas costs for creating and interacting with smart accounts are still higher than EOAs, especially on mainnet. Because each smart account is a deployed contract, it incurs base deployment costs and storage rent. Although some chains like Base and zkSync have lower gas fees, adoption is constrained by cost sensitivity in low-value use cases.

Security remains a concern. While smart accounts can embed advanced rules, they also increase the attack surface. Malicious paymasters, flawed validation logic, or poorly designed plugins can introduce vulnerabilities that bypass standard assumptions about wallet behavior. Moreover, because many smart account frameworks use proxy patterns or upgradable modules, ensuring code integrity over time requires rigorous auditing and upgrade governance.

Tooling, while improving, is fragmented. Different SDKs have different assumptions about bundler interaction, paymaster models, and session key logic. There is still no universal standard for wallet events, error codes, or fallback strategies when the EntryPoint contract fails to execute a UserOperation. As a result, dApps must test their logic against multiple account types to ensure compatibility. This problem is compounded by the lack of widespread standard adoption; although ERC-4337 is live, many popular apps and wallets have not yet integrated it.

The road ahead: ERC-6900 modular account architecture

To address the fragmentation and promote interoperability, Ethereum developers have proposed ERC-6900: a modular account interface standard. Unlike previous drafts that focused on specific implementations, ERC-6900 defines how a smart account can register, compose, and verify modules. This allows developers to build small, reusable components—such as signature validators, paymaster policies, or precondition checks—and attach them to any account that supports the interface.

With ERC-6900, a smart account becomes a composition of plugins rather than a monolithic contract. This architecture allows for easier updates, better auditing, and shared security reviews. Developers can publish verified modules to registries and have them reused across wallets, increasing standardization and reducing development effort. The modular model also aligns with wallet UX goals, where users may want to add features like two-factor authentication, trusted contact approvals, or conditional transfers without redeploying their entire account.

In the long term, the move toward modular smart accounts will also facilitate interoperability across chains. Frameworks will be able to translate modules between Ethereum, zk-rollups, and L2s without duplicating logic. This modular design, combined with rising bundler support and maturing paymaster economics, points to a future where smart accounts become the default wallet model—not the exception.